The murder of Mayor Alejandro Arcos just six days after taking office shocked Mexican public opinion and angered it with gang violence, forcing the government to intervene.
On September 30, Mr. Alejandro Arcos was sworn in the mayor of Chilpancingo City, Guerrero’s capital in southwestern Mexico, which was the operating area, scrambling for dozens of dangerous gangs.
Less than a week later, President Sheinbaum confirmed that Chilpancingo’s 43-year-old anti-gang violence mayor had been murdered.
Mayor Alejandro Arcos. Photo: El Financiero
Photos of the body of Mr. Arcos’s incomplete truck spread on social networks, causing shock and indignation in the public.
“I lived here all my life, and I want to die here. But I want to die fighting for my city,” Mr. Arcos said in the video.
Arcos’s death also shook Mexican politics. Alejandro Moreno, president of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), called the assassination “an abhorrent act of terrorism.”
Opposition senator Ricardo Anaya pointed to the worrying security situation in Mexico due to gang violence. Since former president Felipe Calderon mobilized the army to declare war on the gangs in 2006, more than 450,000 people have been murdered and tens of thousands have gone missing.
The assassination of Arcos occurred after his two close allies were killed. It was Francisco Tapia, the new City Council Secretary, shot dead on October 3, and Ulises Hernandez Martinez, former police commander was likely to become security director, shot at night before Arcos was sworn in office.
“The fact that the new mayor of such an important city died in such a horrible way is shocking. Something must be done to ensure this does not happen again,” Anaya said, calling for immediate changes in security policy.
The Arcos assassination is a reminder of the long-running gang violence that has spiraled out of control in the Latin American country, observers say.
President Sheinbaum said officials “are conducting all necessary investigations”.
“Mexico will not return to the strategy of using the former President of President Calderon’s gangs, which causes a lot of harm to the nation. We believe that security and peace are the result of justice,” she said.
The Mexican army’s anti -gang campaign was launched by Calderon since 2006, causing many tycoons to be arrested, but big tapes decayed into small groups, scrambling for more bloody areas.
Location of Guerrero state (red) and its capital Chilpancingo. Graphic: Wikipedia
Former President Andres Munuel Lopez Obrador, Ms Sheinbaum’s predecessor, was the first to implement a “hugs not bullets” strategy, advocating not to confront the gangs but rather to call on them to refrain from violence.
Although Mr. Obrador declared that his period at the end of his term has helped the murder rate in Mexico reduce slightly, security analysts agreed that his national stability efforts have failed.
In 2023, Mexico recorded more than 30,000 murders, the rate of 24/100,000 people, 4 times higher than the US.
Thành phố Chilpancingo là một trong số đó. Thủ phủ bang Guerrero hiện được xem là một trong những nơi nguy hiểm nhất cả nước, là điểm nóng của hoạt động tống tiền, sản xuất, trung chuyển ma túy xuyên quốc gia, kèm nạn tham nhũng.
National Guard (GN) soldiers monitor a prison in Culiacan after gang members escaped in January 2023. Photo: AFP
Under public pressure after the murder of Mr. Arcos, President Sheinbaum on October 8 announced a new anti-gang violence security plan led by Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch.
Mr. Harfuch has extensive experience dealing with organized crime. In 2020, he survived an ambush by assassins who fired more than 400 rifle and rocket-propelled grenade shots at his car as it passed through the city.
Theo kế hoạch mới, Mexico sẽ tăng cường hoạt động tình báo, điều tra để đối phó với tội phạm băng đảng. “Chúng tôi sẽ tiếp tục từ chiến lược mà tổng thống Obrador đã đề ra, ưu tiên chú ý tới những gia đình nghèo nhất”, Harfuch nói.
Nhưng các nhà phân tích cho rằng trọng tâm của kế hoạch vẫn theo phương châm “trao nhau cái ôm thay vì những viên đạn”, ưu tiên giảm nghèo, phát triển các chương trình xã hội, thay vì quyết liệt đối phó băng đảng.
“The new plan looks like the old plan,” said Mike Vigil, a former official with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). “Mexico will continue to militarize its policing and maintain social programs to try to prevent young people from joining gangs,” said David Saucedo, a Mexican security analyst.
Mexico’s Congress transferred control of the National Guard (GN) to the Defense Ministry in the final weeks of President Obrador’s term. The 120,000-strong force, created by Mr. Obrador, was initially supposed to be a civilian unit, but most of its members were recruited and trained from the military.
The shortcomings of the militarized policing policy are evident in cities and suburban towns, where GN members patrol and set up security checkpoints, but rarely arrest people or conduct investigations like the police.
In fact, locals say the guardsmen often refuse to leave the base until they are ordered to do so by headquarters, even when crime is rampant outside. Much of the guard is also focused on dealing with migrants to the United States, rather than on crime.
President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke in Mexico City, October 3. Photo: AP
When President Sheinbaum announced the security plan on October 8, Mr. Harfuch said the GN would operate more like a police force, even though its members were not properly trained in security operations.
He pledged to establish a national security academy to train these forces, and set up an office to compile intelligence on gangs.
“It is necessary to turn the intelligence we collected into anti -gang surveys,” Harfuch said.
